2014 Golden Globes: award winners

"Wow, that crept up," she joked. "I had a few vodkas under my belt and here we are."

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Blanchett, who played a New York socialite reduced to slumming with her sister in the Woody Allen movie, said it had been an extraordinary year – decade even – for female roles in cinema.

"It's impossible to even approach good work without working with good people. So enter Woody Allen, who writes these things and directs these things with such alarming regularity that we sort of almost take him for granted."

While the Golden Globes are more boozy dress rehearsal than Oscar predictor, Blanchett's win confirms her as favourite to win best actress at the Academy Awards.

On the red carpet, Blanchett said two words – "Woody Allen" – were enough to convince her to sign up to Blue Jasmine.

"That's all any girl needs to hear. I'd been waiting a long time for the call and I'd sort of given up," she said.

With the Oscar nominations announced later this week, the closeness of this year's best picture race was reflected in Globes being spread between leading contenders Gravity, American Hustle, 12 Years a Slave, Her, Dallas Buy-ers Club and The Wolf of Wall Street.

Mexico's Alfonso Cuaron won best director for Gravity, his sci-fi movie and philosophical meditation starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as astronauts stranded in space.

"This is for the hundreds of people that made this movie possible," Cuaron said. "Because of my thick accent, they ended up doing what they thought I'd said, not what I really said."

The director joked that his accent meant Bullock once thought he said he was going to give her "herpes" instead of an "earpiece".

At a ceremony that hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler described as "the beautiful mess we hoped it would be", American Hustle won three awards – best musical or comedy movie and both best lead actress (Amy Adams) and best supporting actress (Jennifer Lawrence) in a musical or comedy.

Director David O. Russell's movie, which Fey joked was originally titled "Explosion in the Wig Factory", is based on a true story about the FBI recruiting con artists to uncover corrupt politicians.

Best motion picture drama was won by 12 Years A Slave, British director Steve McQueen's emotional tale about a well-educated Washington man who was kidnapped into slavery in the 1840s.

Matthew McConaughey, who played an AIDS patient who smuggled unapproved pharmaceutical drugs into Texas, won best actor in a motion picture drama for Dallas Buyers Club. He said the movie was turned down 86 times before it was made.

"I'm really glad it got passed on so many times or it wouldn't have come to me," he said.

Jared Leto won best supporting actor for playing a HIV positive transsexual woman in the same film, directed by Jean-Marc Vallée.

Leonardo DiCaprio won best actor in a musical or comedy for The Wolf of Wall Street - playing New York stockbroker Jordan Belfort, who became one of America's great corporate hustlers in the '90s.

"Wow, this is an incredible, incredible honour," DiCaprio said, "I never would have guessed I would have won for best actor in a comedy."

He thanked director Martin Scorsese "for allowing me to stalk you into this film".

Best screenplay went to to writer-director Spike Jonze for Her, which has Joaquin Phoenix as a writer who falls for a computer operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson.

In the showdown of big-name musicians, U2's Bono, Adam Clayton, The Edge and Larry Mullen won best original song in a motion picture for Ordinary Love from Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom.

"This really is personal for us, very, very personal," said Bono of the late South African leader. "This man turned our life upside down, right side up. A man who refused to hate, not because he didn't have rage or anger ... but he thought love would do a better job."

The band's rivals in the category included Taylor Swift (Sweeter Than Fiction from One Chance), Chris Martin (Atlas from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire) and T-Bone Burnett, Justin Timberlake and the Coen brothers (Please Mr Kennedy from Inside Llewyn Davis).

In the television categories, Bryan Cranston finally won a Golden Globe – his first after four consecutive nominations – for Breaking Bad.

"This is such a wonderful honour, such a lovely way to say goodbye to the show that meant so much to me," he said. "Now through this and the Hollywood Foreign Press, everyone around the world will be able to share in Breaking Bad's mirth and merriment."

The show also won best television series drama over House of Cards, Downton Abbey, The Good Wife and Masters of Sex.

Demonstrating the strength of television drama and the crossover of talents between both fields, Steven Soderbergh's Behind The Candelabra, which starred Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as his young lover, won best mini-series or movie made for television.

Douglas won best actor in the category.

Another veteran actor, Jon Voight, won best supporting actor in a series, mini-series or telemovie for Ray Donovan - 43 years after his first nomination for Midnight Cowboy.

Despite being snubbed at the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards, Elisabeth Moss won best actress in a mini-series or motion picture made for television for Top of the Lake, the Jane Campion-Gerard Lee mini-series shot in New Zealand.

Best musical or comedy television series was an upset - Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which has Andy Samburg as an immature New York detective and is yet to screen in Australia, beat the hit shows Modern Family, The Big Bang Theory, Girls and Parks and Recreation.

At a traditionally freewheeling awards, the wackiest speech was by an emotional Jacqueline Bisset, who won best supporting actress in a television series, mini-series or telemovie for Dancing on the Edge, about an African-American jazz band in 1930s.

The veteran star of Bullitt and The Deep noted that she had been nominated as promising newcomer 47 years ago.

"I want to thank the people who have given me joy – and there have been many," she continued. "And the people who've given me shit." As the music rose to play her off, Bisset added "I believe if you want to look good, you have to forgive everybody."